Scientists just saw a black hole eat a star and spit some of it back out for the first time ever

For the first time, researchers have spotted a star being swallowed up by a black hole, and then watched as some of the star's matter was ejected back out as a flare of plasma moving at nearly the speed of light - a process that's been compared to a cosmic 'burp'.

Scientists have seen black holes swallowing stars before and they've also separately detected these mysterious jets of matter blasting out, but until now no one had been fast enough with their telescopes to link the two events, and were never able to witness them occurring in sequence.